Fathom (1967)

Seen in retrospect, some films seem to perfectly embody their era.  Fathom is one such film - watching it today you can't help but feel that it has perfectly preserved a moment in time.  In contrast to many movies of its era, it doesn't try to show us the 'swinging Sixties', but rather the new prosperity of the decade, when overseas travel suddenly became a reality, not just for the jet set and independently wealthy, but also for certain section of the middle classes.  The story unfolds against a background of Brits and Americans on holiday in Spain - not on package holidays to specialised resorts, which effectively recreated parts of the UK, but with sunshine.  That was yet to come.  This was a time when even Spain seemed exotic and a trip there - now made affordable by cheap jet travel for more people than ever - seemed an adventure.  And it is all captured here, in Fathom: the unending sunshine, the hostels full of interesting young people, the whitewashed stone villages, unusual sporting activities (diving, of both the sea and sky varieties) and the adventure.  The adventure here is experienced by Raquel Welch's Fathom Haverill, an American dental technician and skydiver, who is touring Europe during her vacation as part of a US parachute display team.  She finds herself recruited by Ronald Fraser's Douglas Campbell, apparently the representative of a NATO intelligence organisation, to assist in the recovery of a lost nuclear trigger, the 'Fire Dragon'.  Also seeking the 'Fire Dragon' is Anthony Franciosa's mysterious American Peter Merriwether and sinister Armenian Serapkin (Clive Revill).

Of course, nothing is as it seems - even the film, which turns out to be a crime caper masquerading as a sub-Bondian spy film, when it is revealed that 'Fire Dragon' is actually a priceless historical artefact stolen from communist China.  Fathom has to try a figure out, via many plot convolutions, who is the thief trying to retrieve their loot and who is the detective trying to recover it on behalf of the rightful owners.  While the plot twists and turns constantly, in truth none of it is at all surprising.  Indeed, to call Fathom lightweight would be an understatement.  But the plot, of course, isn't the film's main focus - that would be Raquel Welch herself.  Fresh from playing a fur bikini-cald cavewoman in Hammer's One Million Years BC (1966), she was considered hot property at the time.  The film wastes no opportunity to highlight her assets as the script constantly finds opportunities for her to don a bikini - the camera lingering over her cleavage or zooming in on her behind, (the sequence where she evades Tom Adams' attempts to run her down with his speed boat by constantly diving under the water seems designed solely to provide shots of her backside).  The tone is set by Maurice Binder's title sequence, during which the camera lovingly lingers over Fathom's body as she lies on the ground.

Apparently made to capitalise on the popularity of the 'Modesty Blaise' comic strip, Fathom ultimately makes the same mistake in its portrayal of its titular character as the film version of Modesty Blaise (1966) does.  While the strip portrays Blaise as an independent, capable woman, who doesn't need male assistance to resolve situations, the film version of the character constantly has to be rescued by male characters, particularly her sidekick Willie.  Likewise, in Fathom the eponymous character is all too often at the mercy of events, (events instigated by male characters), forced to be reactive rather than proactive.  In too many key scenes she ends up reliant upon the intervention of male characters in order to save her.  Worst of all, both films completely undermine their female leads' independence by insisting that, by the film's end, they need a male partner.  Modesty Blaise is pretty much forced together with Willie, while Fathom, ultimately, finds herself being forced by the plot into hooking up with the obnoxious Merriwether.  Really, despite being the film's nominal male lead, Franciosa's character is smug, sexist and patronising toward Fathom.  Yet by the film's end, she finds herself more or less with him.  It seems that the film's makers are so determined to pursue the idea that even a strong independent woman needs man, it is even prepared to pair her off with the slimiest man in the picture as, it seems, any man will do.  It seems particularly inappropriate as Welch has finally proven his patronising of her to be totally misplaced.

Franciosa's character is problematic.  Presenting the lead male character as a smarmy egotist who constantly patronises the heroine is one thing, but then presenting him as the 'hero' and letting him effectively 'win' her at the climax is another.  Even when I first saw this film on TV as a child, I hated his character and willed him to fall flat on his face.  But, sadly, he doesn't.  Even in the supposedly liberated sixties, commercial film makers, it seems, just couldn't bring themselves to endorse the idea that women might not actually need men, or that audiences could accept a scenario where there are no sympathetic male characters.  The other main male characters are portrayed better, Fraser's supposed intelligence operative is plausible enough, although it is no surprise that he turns out to be the bad guy.  Richard Briers, as his sidekick, is, on the surface, his usual, over eager public school boy sitcom persona, yet he imbues the character with an underlying menace and caddishness.  Clive Revill gives a characteristically eccentric performance as Serapkin, (he could almost have stepped out of an episode of Batman), although this ultimately robs the character of any real menace.  For her part, Welch is engaging enough, despite the fact that the film doesn't require much in the way acting ability from her.

In the end, though, none of this really matters.  Fathom isn't about plot or characters - its attraction lies in the way in which captures a time and a place, a mood, even.  Douglas Slocombe's cinematography is beautiful - you can almost feel the warmth of the Spanish sun in virtually every sub drenched shot.  The languorous pace of Leslie H Martinson's (who is best remenered for directing the 1966 Batman film with Adam West )direction captures perfectly the lazy mood of a summer holiday in the sun.  A feeling further reinforced by John Dankworth's laid back musical score.  The script, by Lorenzo Semple Jr, (who had scripted the aforementioned Batman movie), is efficient, if not terribly original, and was based on an unpublished novel, 'Fathom Heavensent', by Larry Forrester, (it would have been the second in the series, after 'A Girl Named Fathom', but never saw the light of day).  Its main problem being that it is neither quite thrilling enough to succeed as a straight action thriller, nor funny enough to be a comedy thriller, falling between the two.  At one point low budget maestro Lindsay Shonteff was apparently in the frame to direct Fathom but, on the advice of his agent, opted to direct The Million Eyes of Sumuru for Harry Allan Towers, instead.  It is interesting to speculate what his version of Fathom would have been like.  Judging by his subsequent films, Shonteff seemed far more comfortable with strong female characters and would likely have played up the film's hunour and comic strip aspects. But it wasn't to be and we're left with Martinson's version of the film: an inconsequential but entertaining trifle.  If you are in the right mood, Fathom is still fun, evoking a vision of the eternal summer of the sixties, when everyone seemed to be on their holidays.